The Darkside Of The Sun

a slight feeling of nausea. The camera was in a metal mosquito, high in the dome. He thumbed a switch, and the screen faded in a view from a mechanical shrew in the branches of a tree on the edge of the west lawn. Most of the guests had already arrived, and were mingled around the long buffet table.
    At least half of them were phnobes, many of them from the buruku colonies around Tau City. Korodore recognized the diplomats – they were tall, dark alpha-males, carrying sunshades. The less exalted, who were more acclimatized to the light, stood in small, silent groups around the lawn. Korodore switched from pinhead to pinhead until he located Hrsh-Hgn, reading a memory cube in the shade of a balloon tree. The Stoics, probably.
    Behind Korodore the darkness of the big security room glowed here and there as the other security officers watched. Only Korodore knew that under the horticultural dome by the north lawn was another, smaller security room checking on this one. And occasionally he switched to his own private circuit and watched the officers there. And, hidden by him in a place the exact location of which he had scrubbed from his mind, was a small biocomputer. He had programmed it carefully. It watched him.
    He turned back to the guests. Here and there a big gold egg now showed in the crowd – the Creapii ambassadors. Experience suggested that there was no risk in them. They seldom meddled in the affairs of worlds where water liquefied.
    One was holding a dish of silicate-salt hors d’oeuvres in a single armoured tentacle. Occasionally it held on to the complicated airlock on its circumference. It was chatting to Joan I, who stood majestic in the black memory velvet and purple tabard of a Sadhimist Dame-Priestess in the negative aspect of Nocticula-Hecate. Lady of Night and Death, thought Korodore. It was not a tactful choice.
    She smiled at the Creapii and turned to face the hidden camera, raising one hand. Korodore reached out and tipped a switch.
    ‘How goes it?’ Joan asked. Korodore watched fascinated – she had a remarkable talent for sub-vocalizing.
    ‘He is breakfasting. We have treble-checked the food and everything else.’
    ‘Has he shown any effects from yesterday?’
    Korodore paused. ‘No. While he slept I used a brain scrubber on him. I—’
    ‘ How dare you! ’
    ‘It will keep yesterday’s memories in a state of flux for a few hours. Would you prefer him to learn the truth? He would, had I not done so – even if he had to brow-beat it out of Hrsh-Hgn.’
    ‘You should have asked me!’
    Korodore sighed, and picked up a memory cube on the console. ‘I’m sorry, madam, but you have a security rating now of only 99.087 per cent. I checked. Probably it’s only deep Freudian impulses – but from now on I am afraid I must run this show.
    ‘Like I said, madam, I’m not inclined to accept probability math. You may, if you like.’
    He switched off. She stood rigid for a moment, trying to contact him, then turned and began to talk brightly to a tall diplomat from the Board of Earth.
    Korodore turned his attention to the main hall. Dom wasn’t there. His heart stopped until he realized that the boy had also moved out of one camera’s range to look at his presents.
    Dom opened the first package and drew out a pair of gravity sandals, glistening under their thin coat of oil. The tag said: ‘From your Godfather. Come up and orbit me some time. It gets damn lonely.’
    Dom grinned and buckled them on. For a hectic few minutes he bobbed and swooped among the struts of the dome, gliding to an unsteady halt six inches above the floor. He felt that the sandals would probably be the climax – most of the other presents would be much less interesting.
    From Hrsh-Hgn came a fat rectangle. Dom unwrapped a memory cube and ran his finger over the index face. The cube lit up, the title page standing out in white letters a few centimetres above the surface and revealing: ‘The Glass Castles: A History of Joker Studies, by Dr Hrsh-Hgn. Dedicated to Chairman Dominickdaniel Sabalos of Widdershins.’
    In smaller letters Dom read: ‘Number One in a limited edition of one (1) imprinted on Third Eye saffron-silica.’
    ‘A high honour, indeed,’ said Isaac. Dom nodded, and thumbed the cube at random to read: ‘… mystery of the galaxy. As Sub-Lunar has said, to the imaginative mind they form part of galactic mythology: the Glass Castles at the back of the Galactic North Wind. These towers, built